€30 or €50 for both days, with a tour of the Yeats tower and coffee included.

Would you like help preparing for your English Literature exams? More information and ideas about plays and poetry? Have a wider interest in theatre and verse? There is no better time than St George’s Day (also Shakespeare’s birthday) to come to Yeats’s tower at Thoor Ballylee to hear more.

Ralph Richardson as Macbeth (RSC 1952)

Denis Creaven, English teacher at The Institute of Education, Dublin, prepares lectures and notes focused on Leaving Certificate examination requirements. Complimentary handouts of the lectures will be distributed.

Macbeth Preparation Day 1

Tuesday 23rd April 2019

Deals with topics in Macbeth including the roles of the main characters.

WB Yeats himself had endless arguments with his father about the merits of various Shakespeare plays, and founded the Abbey Theatre in honour of Shakespeare’s Globe theatre in London. As he wrote in 1906, “every national dramatic movement or theatre in countries like Bohemia and Hungary, as in Elizabethan England, has arisen out of a study of the common people, and out of an imaginative re-creation of national history or legend.” From Scottish history Shakespeare plucked the story of Macbeth, and produced some of the finest and strangest scenes in theatrical history.

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Come and hear more, and enjoy and inclusive tea and tour around the storied building of Thoor Ballylee. Proudly supported by the Institute of Education, Dublin.

Yeats Thoor Ballylee Society

Welcome to Thoor Ballylee.
This fourteenth-century Hiberno-Norman tower was described by Seamus Heaney as the most important building in Ireland, due to its close association with his fellow Nobel Laureate for literature, W.B.Yeats. The Yeats Thoor Ballylee Society are actively seeking funds to ensure the tower and associated cottage are permanently restored and reopened to visitors as a cultural and educational centre.